


Solitaire and Soldiers, and Marbles to Boot

by greerwatson



Category: Charlotte Sometimes - Penelope Farmer
Genre: Futurefic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:59:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some years later, Sarah still wonders just what was going on that year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitaire and Soldiers, and Marbles to Boot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [calliette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliette/gifts).



> This story has more or less been written to the prompt, _"I'd love something about Charlotte and Clare's relationship, either friendship fic or femslash. If you prefer, I'd also be keen to read something about Sarah and her relationship with Charlotte."_
> 
> However, in your letter, you did say, "Sarah should be fleshed out a bit more". This is only a little bit more; but then this is only a Madness fic.

“Something a bit weird happened my last year at school, actually,” confided Sarah. She was sitting in the living room of the shared flat.

“Uh-huh,” said Donna. “What like? Ghosts in the refectory? Burglars after the school plate?”

She was American. The miracle, Sarah thought, was that she’d even _read_ a school story of that type: she wasn’t sure they had them in the States. But then, it was an Anglophilic aunt whose passion for London had led to Donna having funds for a year abroad—and that could be very helpful when the rent was due. Sarah’s previous flatmate had been late with her share as often as not.

“No,” she replied. “The ‘weird’ was my mother.”

“At school.” Donna sounded understandably sceptical.

“No, of course not. Well, not unless it was Parents’ Day or something; but it wasn’t. However, it is true that my mother went to the same school when she was a kid. We’re talking…oh, more than forty years ago! During the First World War. As far as the weird thing is concerned, I can only think that something happened, way back then.”

“Oh, this _is_ going to be a ghost story,” declared Donna with certainty. “What’s it the ghost of? A soldier who died in the war? A lost sweetheart?”

Sarah laughed. “Maybe not ghosts, exactly. Or maybe it depends what exactly you mean by ‘ghosts’.”

“Now you’re trying to tease.” Donna picked herself up off the floor and headed to the fridge, such as it was. “I want a beer. If you’re going to tell me, tell me. I’m not going to beg,” wafted back through the curtain of beads. She reappeared, holding a bottle. “Want one?” she asked.

Sarah still hadn’t got used to the idea of beer, not as a drink for herself, anyway. “No, that’s all right,” she said. “Look, I don’t want to bore you, if you’re not interested; but you _did_ ask, after all.”

“Yeah, okay. I told you about _my_ weird, you tell me yours. That’s fair.” 

“So…?”

“Not begging, mind; but, if you want to go on, that’s okay by me. Who’s the ghost?”

“Not a ghost, exactly. But I _do_ think it maybe does have something to do with my mother’s sister Clare.”

“Your aunt.”

“Well, not exactly.”

“If she’s your mother’s sister, then she’s your aunt.”

Sarah hesitated. It was logical, but…. “No,” she said finally. “She’s dead, you see. She died years ago. Long before we were born. She was just a kid—younger than _we_ are. She never grew up to be an aunt.”

“So _she’s_ the ghost,” said Donna, satisfied to have got _that_ sorted out. She sat down cross-legged on the floor, careful not to tilt the bottle. “Go on.”

“Well, when my oldest sister went off to school, my mother told her to keep an eye out in case a girl called Charlotte Makepeace was a student there.”

“I thought her name was Clare?”

“My _aunt_ was Clare. I’m talking about Charlotte.”

“So she _was_ your aunt.”

“After a fashion. At least Clare was. Not Charlotte.” Sarah paused. “Look, this story is about Charlotte, really. I’m just sure— _morally_ sure—that it relates somehow to my mother’s dead big sister. Who died in the Spanish flu, way back when.”

“Way, _way_ back when,” Donna agreed.

“So my mother asked my sister to keep an eye out for Charlotte—”

“Who was what? Like, the daughter of an old friend? An old _school_ friend?”

“I don’t know!” Sarah exclaimed in frustration. “None of us does! She told first one of us, and then the next, and finally it came down to me. I’m the youngest—and there are quite a few of us altogether, you know. Four. Each of us in turn was given the same instruction: to look out for Charlotte, and keep an eye on her if she turned up one year when we were at school.”

“ _Which_ year?”

“None of us knew. And it was pretty obvious that our mother didn’t know, either. _That’s_ the weird part, you see. If she simply wanted us to be kind to some old friend’s daughter—well, sure, that would be reasonable. We might like the girl, we might not; but _as a request_ it would be reasonable. It’s the sort of thing that mothers do, after all, isn’t it?”

“Well, not _my_ mother,” said Donna. “But I get what you mean.”

“The thing is though, Mother clearly had no idea how old Charlotte was. Otherwise she’d have known when she’d be coming to the school, wouldn't she?”

“Lost touch, maybe?”

“Well, I haven’t come to the end. You see, one by one my sisters went off to school, year by year, but there never was a pupil named Charlotte Makepiece. You could tell that my mother was always a bit disappointed, and then she’d look hopeful the next year. And then, finally, in my very last year….” She paused dramatically.

“There was Charlotte,” put in Donna, who could see the obvious coming a mile off.

“Yeah,” said Sarah, a bit crestfallen at having her thunder stolen.

“That’s a bit weird,” Donna conceded. “Not as weird as mine, but definitely odd.”

“I haven’t finished. There’s more. I kept an eye out for Charlotte, just as Mother had asked, bearing in mind that she was one of the new pupils so keeping an eye on her wasn’t the worst thing to do—and she was quite a nice girl, I suppose, though I’d hardly say I got to _know_ her. She made some friends, and mostly didn’t get into any trouble; and a couple of times I talked with her.”

She could see that Donna was getting bored, and got to the point.

“Well, we had a solitaire board at home, one that my mother had when we were children. We played with it all the time when we were young. Oh, and some soldiers: I didn’t much care for them—they were pretty battered—but my second-to-oldest sister used to put them in with some modern ones when she played with her toy castle, since they filled out the army. And there was an old bag of marbles, a bit different from the ones you get today: I always rather liked them.”

Donna nodded, wondering where this was leading.

““So what happened was that Mother gave them all away. Solitaire and soldiers, and marbles to boot. _Not_ to charity, saying we’d outgrown them and there were poor children who’d love to play with them. (You know the sort of thing mothers say.) No, she gave them to—”

“Charlotte.”

“Exactly. Now, at the time, we didn’t know. I mean, I hadn’t looked at the old toys in years. However, about six months later, Jessica—that’s my oldest sister—asked if she could have the marbles for her little boys. And _that’s_ when it all came out: my mother had to say no, and tell us she’d given them away. Jessica was pretty angry. I wasn’t that keen myself, though I didn’t see why _her_ children should have them more than anyone else. But that, none of it, explains why Mother gave the things away to Charlotte. She never even met her!”

“Yeah, I got that. She didn’t know the kid’s age.”

“No, I don’t just mean that she never met her before giving her the toys. I mean that she didn’t give her the toys in person: she posted them. _Nor did she see her after,_ ” Sarah said emphatically, to ensure that Donna would appreciate the significance. “In fact, she actually said she didn’t want to!”

Donna looked mildly impressed.

“And she looked really kind of funny as she said it, too. You see, she said,” Sarah paused to get it right, “she said that the things were truly Charlotte’s, and she had a right to them. She—Mother, I mean—had had her turn, and had it far longer than she ought.”

Donna frowned, trying to puzzle through this. “She’d ‘had her turn’?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But that’s what she said. ‘Her turn’ was just how she put it. And then she said, ‘It’s time now to send them back to Charlotte, for they have always been half hers.’”

“‘Always’ been half hers?”

“Yes—and Mother’s had those toys all her life, pretty well.”

It made no sense to either of them.

“I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

“I’m sure there must be, too—but I still can’t imagine what it might be.”


End file.
